Linguistics: just a broad
overview

Walloon was "born" between the 8th and the 12th centuries from the
remnants of the Latin language brought to our regions by soldiers,
merchants and settlers from Rome. At the time, the autochtons calles
their language "roman". The name "Walloon" (with its modern meaning)
appears in the beginning of the 16th century. Our language is a member
of the romance languages family and of the gallo-roman or "oïl"
subgroup, of which the most famous member is French.

Walloon is a close relative of French - but should not be taken for
a dialect of French, although it has often been considered so. The relationship
seems to be comparable to that between Scots and English in the UK, or
Asturianu and Castellano in Spain, or Letzebuerguesh and German in Luxembourg.
There are at least three language levels in Wallonia: standard French,
Walloon in its different dialects, and our local French (ie a dialect of
French) which is more or less deeply influenced by Walloon.

Walloon is probably the "oïl language" which managed to survive
best in the shadow of French.

Here are a few characteristics of the language, just a few examples
taken almost at random:

Morphology

The plural feminine adjectives before the noun take an
unstressed ending "-ès" (except in the Ardenne dialect):
compare li djaene foye (the yellow leave) and les
djaenès foyes (the yellow leaves).

There is no gender difference in definite articles and
possessives (except in the Ardenne dialect): compare Walloon li
vweture (the car, feminine) and li cir (the sky,
masculine), with French la voiture but le ciel; Walloon
has si coir (his/her body, masculine) and si fignesse
(his/her window, feminine) while French has son corps but sa
fenêtre.

Lexicon

Walloon still has a few latin remnants which have
disappeared from the neighboring romance languages, e.g. compare
Walloon dispierter (to awake) and Castilian despertar
(same meaning).

But the most striking feature is the number of borrowings to
Germanic languages (Flemish and German dialects): compare Walloon
flåw and today's Dutch flauw (weak). Other common
borrowings, among hundreds of others, are: dringuele (tip;
Dutch drinkgeld), crole (curl), spiter (to
spatter; same root as the English to spit, or German
spützen), li sprewe (the starling; Dutch
spreeuw), etc.

Syntax

The adjective is often placed before the noun: compare
Walloon on foirt ome (a strong man) with French un homme
fort; ene blanke måjhon (a white house) and French une
maison blanche.

A borrowing to Germanic languages: the construction
Cwè-ç ki c'est di ça po ene fleur (what is
this flower?) can be compared word to word to German Was ist das
für eine Blume?

Sociolinguistics: just a broad
overview

Walloon is one of those numerous "forgotten languages" (or "regional",
"minority", "lesser used", "endangered"...), which have been living in
the shadow of a linguistic big brother. The proportion of speakers of
Walloon had remained rather stable until the beginning of this
century: in spite of a slow erosion mainly in the upper social
classes, most of the population used only Walloon in everyday
life. But the number of speakers fell sharply between
1930-1960. Today, although there are no large-scale sociolinguistic
surveys (there are several local surveys), the number of regular
active speakers can be estimated at 35-45% of a total population of
3,200,000. In younger people (20-30), surveys suggest that about 10%
say they are active speakers and 40-60% say they have a passive
knowledge. The proportion of those who can read and write is very very
small indeed (Walloon is not taught, except in a few voluntary and
successful evening classes). In general, there are fewer female
bilinguals than males. The level of bilingualism is higher in the
country than in the cities. There are no or very few monolingual
speakers, although there are still more than a handful whose main
language is Walloon, mainly among the elderly.

The number of speakers has been shrinking, and so has the
functional and social range of the language: frenchifying began in the
higher strata of the population. The bourgeoise also began using
French in the 18th-19th centuries. Then the rest of the population saw
that there was no social future outside French, which was the sole
language in Walloon schools; all parents began raising their children
in French (or often in a dialectal form of French more or less
inspired by Walloon). Now, the extremity of the functional deadend is
near, with some people claiming that Walloon should be reverred only
as a relic of the past, a literary language or, at best, "the language
of the heart", but not of everyday speech.

Although there has long been a group of philologists willing to
promote Walloon (that is: its literature and the dialectological
studies), it is only recently that a movement in favor of the Walloon
language developed which simply promotes its use, and asserts that it
has still a role to play in today's Walloon society. Too few too late?
Wait and see!

There is no spoken standard. The efforts to develop a written
standard are recent too (if you want to see how it looks, this page is
available in standard Walloon too: click
here).

Official attention came in 1990, with the vote of a decree which
recognizes the existence of "endogenous languages" (not named) in the
so-called "French community" (i.e. Wallonia and the French-speaking
population of Brussels) of the Belgian federal state.The decree states
that these languages should be studied and their use encouraged. A
specific committee for "endogenous languages" was created with the
Ministry of Culture, but nothing much has happened so far: the room
allowed for Walloon on television went on declining, nothing is done
in the schools, as far as place names are concerned, etc.

To date (July 1998), Belgium has not signed the European charter on
regional or minority languages, adopted by the Council of Europe in
June 1991.

Dialectology: just a broad
overview

Dialectological studies have been flourishing in Wallonia for nearly a
century. In fact, dialectology has long been considered the only way
of studying the language.

Although our linguistic area is tiny (a square of about 150 x 150 km)
and does not include the whole of Wallonia (see map below), Walloon is
usually divided into four dialect groups:

central, with the capital of Wallonia, Nameur (Namur),
and the cities of Auve (Wavre) and Dinant

Lexical differences: a nice example is "dirty", which can be said
mannet (central and western), måssî
(eastern), niche (southern) or yôrd
(western).

If you want to have a look at Walloon texts, you can read this page in Walloon, or the pater in 4 dialectal versions.
Walloon is or was spoken also in tiny parts of France (north of the
departement of the Ardennes, e.g. the city of Djivet and a few
villages of the departement of the Nord, along the river Sambre),
Luxembourg (where it disappeared recently) and the USA (region of
Green Bay, Wisconsin, where a compact group of Walloons settled in
the19th century).

Other regional languages spoken in certain areas of Wallonia
include Picard (romance language, western half of the province of
Hainaut), Lorrain (romance language, southern villages of the
Luxembourg province), Champenois (romance language, one village in the
south of the province of Namur) and Letzebuergesch (germanic language,
region of Arlon).

All these languages are spoken in the neighboring countries: the
major part of the Picard and Lorrain linguistic areas are in France
(where they are not recognized at all as languages). Letzebuerguesh is
the official national language of Luxembourg.

Philology: just a very sketchy
overview

The nature of the language written in our country during the Middle
Ages (besides Latin) is still controversial: was it French
decreasingly smacking of Walloon (a specifically written language
called scripta) or Walloon increasingly smacking of French? Two
or three things are sure: first, it is often hard to say how the
spelling of the time was pronounced; second, this language could not
have been written anywhere else in the world as it includes — at
the very least — a variable proportion of Walloon occurrences; and
third, as the centuries went by, the written language became closer
and closer to standard French (with a very few known exceptions).

In the beginning of the 17th century, people were conscious that
what they were writing was far away from what they spoke, which
allowed the emergence of Walloon literature (French was and has
remained the only language for official, formal use). Since then, the
literature in Walloon has been developing without interruption. There
were powerful (after WWII, for instance) and subdued (the beginning of
this century, for instance) moments. Poetry deserves special mention
owing to its quality. Theater, which has been flourishing mainly since
the second half of the 19th century, is characterized by abundance
(over 10,000 plays, mostly comedies!). Prose has developed later,
especially in the 20th century. Other genres include comics, songs,
translations, etc. An embryo of non-fiction prose has developed for a
hundred years. Recently, it has been more and more present in Walloon
magazines.

Walloon culture today

Literature is alive and well with new authors appearing regularly in
several magazines which are almost all — at least in part —
dedicated to literature (list of magazines below).

Theatre is still flourishing with over 200 non-professional companies
playing in the cities and villages of Wallonia for an audience of over
200,000 each year.

In the media, Walloon is present on the state TV (about 2 hours on
Saturday afternoons) and on the state radio (about 3 hours on Friday
evenings). However, the language is permanently under pressure
(budget and time reductions, etc.).

Several French-speaking private radios and national papers and
magazines leave a room for Walloon, either regularly or occasionally.

Walloon is sporadically present in the church (marriages, special
masses...). After a boom in the 70s, the Walloon song is vegetating,
though there is renewed interest with a couple of rock bands now
singing in Walloon. One of them (the bluesman Alfred) has had quite a
lot of success.

Walloon is almost totally absent in the educative world: teachers
are not trained to teach the language, the educational material is
scarce, and the lack of a written standard makes it all the more
difficult to teach Walloon for teachers who are not necessarily
speaking the dialect of the area where they work, to children who come
from several parts of Wallonia and, in addition, who are more and more
French-only speakers.

The main association for the promotion of Walloon is the Union
Culturelle Wallonne (UCW), which is made of five provincial
associations and over 250 local Walloon associations, the majority of
which are theater companies, but also e.g. writers' associations or
the five provincial "Walon è Scole" (Walloon at school)
committees. The main objectives of the UCW are now to promote the use
of Walloon in the basic functions and levels of social life (in the
family, for instance), while defending and co-ordinating the very rich
association network (theater), supporting the presence of Walloon in
the media, the schools, the laws, etc.

Why we do believe in the future of our
language

Although certain aspects of the above picture might seem rather
gloomy, we have plenty of reasons to believe our language still has,
and will continue to have, a role to play in our society. The
following elements (both facts and challenges) are the daily bread of
Walloon promoters:

First, the number of regular speakers is still sizeable (a few
hundred thousands at the very least): those speaking Walloon can still
be considered as something else than Martians (although learners often
complain that they have no one to speak with. One of the problems is
to establish the link between two persons who both speak Walloon but
who do not know it -or do not dare to speak Walloon together!). It is
still possible (and apparently more possible than ten years ago) to
live in Walloon with people who speak it, with magazines which use it
in writing, with theatres, songs, etc. But the situation remains, at
best, one of diglossia anyway, with Walloon used in non-formal
situations only, absent from schools and media... In spite of this,
our humble immediate objective is to re-establish and reinforce a more
generalized diglossia before aiming at more ambitious targets...

Second, although it is said above that the actual proportion of
speakers remains unknown due to the lack of large-scale
sociolinguistic surveys, a few such surveys indicate that the
opinion is changing: while Walloon was considered as something
negative in the past, it is increasingly considered as something
positive (mainly from the points of view of culture and identity),
which probably explains the success of the theatres (audience of over
200,000 persons each year), rock CDs in Walloon, evening classes all
over Wallonia.

Third, we are convinced that, whatever its form, Walloon can only
go on living, as Wallonia is quite a coherent social group tending to
create its own speech. A sign of this is to be found in the fact the
Walloon language is changing rapidly (among other things, younger
speakers tend to use a language form closer to regional French but
also with very marked hypercorrections). In our view, this should be
considered as a sign of life, although language purists lament the
fact that “their” Walloon is changing: if the language is being
adapted by the new generation, this means that this generation still
finds it useful and wishes to take it over, to make it its own.

Finally, there is a strong tradition (study of the language,
literature...) and a dense association network backing the movement
for the promotion of Walloon: e.g. the Union culturelle wallonne has
over 200 member associations (remember that our country is very
tiny). The actions it carries about are well received in
general. However, support from the political world or the media is
still much too weak. And (as yet) the population does not seem
prepared to embrace a well-designed, ambitious and conscious plan in
order to promote the language. But obviously, things are changing
rapidly... .